This afternoon I was reading an editorial piece by Adam Cohen in the New York Times. Adam makes a great point about the need for granular privacy settings, “Users should be asked if they want information to be viewable by others, and by whom: Their friends? Everyone in the world? Privacy settings, which allow for this kind of screening, should be prominent, clear and easily managed.”

What I’m a little confused about is why he said Facebook hasn’t made enough steps to empower users to control their privacy settings. Currently, Facebook offers the most granular privacy controls of any website. The existing problem is not with Facebook but instead with users’ identities across the web. The interesting part of this is that suddenly bloggers, journalists and the general web community appear to believe that privacy controls are something they have a right to and it should be included with all websites.

Aside from the Beacon fiasco, I’m not quite sure why Facebook receives all the blame for failure to provide granular privacy settings. In fact they are one of the few sites that provide such detailed selections. Regardless of whether or not Cohen made an appropriate accusation, we are headed toward a virtual world in which we have more granular controls across all the websites that we participate in. As communication between the multiple services that we use becomes commonplace we will see the emergence of the identity control panel.

We have yet to determine the exact location of that control panel. Right now sites like Facebook and FriendFeed appear to be ideal locations for managing our identity privacy controls. Just as there is a race to develop a singular Social Graph API, I think the next step is a standard for expressing our privacy settings. While I may be ahead of myself on this one, a basic level of privacy settings (make certain friends private, others public) should be eventually build into the social graph API.

Of course a standard for identity management needs to be adopted prior to a standard for privacy. Something eventually needs to get put in place though. I previously suggested that perhaps this is where government should step in. What do you think? Should there be a global privacy standard?

The internet is a buzz today with a study that came out last week talking about how the percentage of children that are harassed sexually online. The report claims a third of all tweenagers between 10 and 15 have had inappropriate sexual advances made on them by adults.

The results of the survey are being used to taught the greater security that comes from social networks vs. IM and Chat Rooms. I find the results interesting, but fail to see this as a glowing recommendation of the safety found on social networks.

First an foremost in my mind is the age restrictions placed on minor’s accounts on Facebook and Myspace. People under the age of 14 have extremely limited accounts are incredibly hard to contact if you do not receive permission first.

I applauded Facebook and Myspace for placing these restrictions on accounts, but what about the 15-17 crowd still being exposed to unwarranted advances. I wonder if the study would have yielded the same results if a slightly older crowd was surveyed.

Secondly, IM and chat are not the beginning of someones social interaction. IM in particular is a tool used to communicate with people already in your social graph. Once you have meet someone on a social network you may begin to chat with them. Does this let social networks off the hook because the crime took place in a third party chat?

I agree social networks are more likely to be safer than IM or chat for minors. My fear however is people will read these results and drop their guard. The survey states the 55 percent of harassments come from chat rooms and IMs, doesn’t that then imply that 45 percent comes from social networks?

The bottom line is this regardless of how your child is communicating online; chat, IM, SMS, online video games, social networks or basic email, parents must remain vigilant. I do not have children but I have to ask. What do you feel is the safest way for your children to be online? Do you let your child surf the internet without your supervision.

Last week I wrote a post that sparked on allfacebook that sparked an interest in many of our readers. The post focused on three high school students who created a profile of one of their professors and listed him as a pedophile. I had insinuated that the real reason the students had not received a harsh punishment was because the teacher had made himself a public figure.

My claim was based on the fact that the teacher had posted profile information about himself and a picture on the school’s website. Since the students had used this information to create a fake profile and therefore proving defamation would have been incredibly difficult; because the teacher had entered the public debate through his own accord.

I had received several emails from people informing me that “I was wrong” and “you are an idiot.” While I never claim to be the smartest man alive, I am pretty sure I am not an idiot (my mother tells me so). Most of the complaints came from people who voluntarily created a Facebook profile or comment on blogs regularly. The teachers professional profile is one off from a Facebook profile, but the principle is the same.

The idea behind what makes a public figure in the United States is constantly contested. Everyone agrees celebrities and politicians are instant public figures, and there are involuntary public figures (people involved in crimes, sensational actions or anything that has instant public appeal), but what turns a private citizen to a public figures is still up in the air.

Say I post on twitter all day, I do, and someone takes a tweet of mine and posts it on the internet. The moment that tweet leaves my phone or desktop I no longer have possession of it. I have freely let my opinion and voice enter the public debate and I have very limited rights to ‘take it back’ if someone repost my tweet. The same holds true with photos I post.

It is possible to prove defamation even if I am a public figure, but to be honest I do not have the finical resources or the time to do so. Many of you out there voiced concern wondering if information you put out made you a public figure. According to the law it does, according to good reason it doesn’t, this is the balancing act that our legal system handles every day.

Don’t confuse debate with a conversation or something formal you see on T.V. A debate can be one man’s ranting about anything as long as he puts it in the public light. The question of who is a public figure is growing larger and larger every day. As more and more people post private information about themselves on line, more and more people enter the public light.

I know many of you out there have an opinion on this subject and I would love to hear it. I am certain I will receive hate mail for this post, but I think it is a debate that should take place. Let me know what you think as long as you aren’t afraid of entering a public debate.

There is more drama taking place on Techmeme today but surprisingly it is not about Facebook. The drama began with a posting on Slashdot in which countless complaints about Google reader’s new shared feature have been posted. These complaints are practically identical to those being heard when Facebook launched Beacon. As Robert Scoble points out, the solution is simple: Granular Privacy Controls.

All social sites must now introduce granular privacy controls that enable users to both opt-in and opt-out of social services. Additionally, privacy settings must be available on a contact by contact basis. Facebook now provides these features and soon enough you will be able to modify your profile for each contact group. While not all the features are required, basic privacy settings definitely are.

If Google is going to succeed with their OpenSocial project, they will need to rapidly adapt and make changes. Users are forgiving so long as you make the necessary changes immediately. Otherwise, your users will leave and never look back. This time around I think that Google deserves a get out of jail free card but they won’t be receiving such gracious givings in the future. Just as Facebook has made their mistakes in navigating the social web, so will Google.

Google needs to be even more careful though given their massive user base. Integrating email with other features is also a risky game. It appears that even Google is willing to take a few more risks to try and make things just a little more social for us all.